New York Confidential

Charlie Lupo (Broderick Crawford) is a gangster who runs the New York branch of a crime syndicate. He is a widower with a worried mother (Celia Lovsky), a grown daughter, Kathy (Anne Bancroft), and a new lover, Iris (Marilyn Maxwell). Hitman Nick Magellan (Richard Conte) of the Chicago mob impresses Lupo, who hires Nick to be his bodyguard. They form a friendship and Kathy is attracted to Nick, but he resists her advances out of respect for Lupo. When a political lobbyist interferes with the syndicate's plans and must be eliminated, Lupo arranges for three men to handle it. But they leave too many clues and themselves have to be taken care of, a task Lupo turns over to Nick. Nick quickly dispatches two of the targets, but a third flees and, in return for ratting out Lupo to the authorities, manages to arrange a deal for himself. The gangster hides out while legal negotiations concerning the charge for which Lupo will go to prison go on. Kathy, having fled her father's home in an attempt to make an independent life, is drawn back in when the police, and reporters, track her down at her job. She shows up at Nick's, clearly intoxicated, to tell him how her life has fallen apart. She throws herself at him but he rejects her. Later, she is killed in a single-car crash. The newspaper headline suggests suicide. Lupo is devastated; his heart no longer in his work, he decides to cooperate with the authorities. The syndicate determines that he must be eliminated and Nick is ordered to do it. He does the job but, as a matter of "insurance," he in turn is killed.